Powerless little ant in a terribly sexist cultural system.

Some days I feel the complete opposite way from what I mentioned in my last post. I see the beauty surrounding me and I feel grateful and happy to be here, but suddenly, something breaks the harmony I feel around me.

I know fully well I’m minuscule and I can’t really change things, I am not entitled to change them, and I don’t even try. I do, however, give advise on how to dispose of plastic (like I don’t give them the plastics I use in my workshops either, I know they’d end up in the woods), or ask them not to throw everything away in the middle of the mountain. But unless they start using bins or a recycling system is set up, what’s the use? They could burn all the plastic – like they already do anyway- and at least the mountains would be plastic-free… Anyway, this has nothing to do with what happened today.

For the second time since I am at the Achcham district, I have seen a teacher hit a girl during my workshop. The first time I politely (and discreetly) explained to him that the girl was there to enjoy herself and asked him not to force her to do anything she didn’t want to – especially not with a slap.

Today, the same girl came to me with a disassembled camera that had fallen to the ground. And he slapped the poor girl again, even though, as far as I understood, she was only coming to let us know but she had not been the one who’d dropped it! I might have not reacted appropriately, but I couldn’t help letting the teacher know in no uncertain way that he was not to touch a girl while I was around ever again. I went to speak to the girl, told her not to worry, that it was just a camera. And asked them all to actually follow my instructions on how to hold a camera.

And we went on with the workshop.

However, this makes me wonder: is what I do any use? Since what I do is not a long-term project, is it being of any real service to these children? Spending some time laughing, taking pictures and playing with photography: does it have any value?

The girls at the area I’m staying at wake up at 5am to go plowing, chopping wood, fetching water and a doing thousand tasks that boys (or men) don’t have to do. The hands of the fourth-grade girls I taught this morning were far more leathery and their skin more hardened than those of my dad after having worked at a forge all his life!

This morning I started out very happy, now I finish the day in a very different mood. Maybe the little clouds on the sky, instead of forecasting a weather change, were saying there is a need to change (my) ways.